Hypatia
Bradlaugh Bonner was not just the daughter of the famous atheist,
secularist MP Charles Bradlaugh, she was a notable activist, writer,
atheist editor and educator in her own right, celebrated in the book
edited by Annie L Gaylor - "Women
Without Superstition, "No Gods, No Masters" - They lived
in modest style for 'placing unpopular causes ahead of creature
comforts.'
The notoriety of
her father made life difficult for her and she was educated in France
from the age of 14.
When her father
died in 1891she started to write his biography, and she was
"forced by constant slanders and rumours of deathbed conversions to
continually correct the public record, and even took successful legal
action against one malicious and fraudulent biographer." And
wrote a pamphlet "Did Charles Bradlaugh Die an Atheist?"
She gave talks
in numerous provincial cities, was an ardent opponent of he death
penalty and proponent of penal reform. She was a political liberal and
peace activist, and founded the Rationalist Peace Society in 1910,
and campaigned for the repeal of the blasphemy laws with
progressives of the day including Bertrand Russell.
Attending an
International Freethought Congress after WWI she reported her delight
that so many Prague citizens wore the congress badge and the pansy (the
symbol of Freethought) 'The organiser Dr Bartosec was one of the
first Prague citizens to be jailed and condemned by the Nazis.'
At the end of
her life, her memory of the slurs on her father, by Christian's
constant rumours of deathbed conversion, she wrote her own
'Testament' for the Literary Guide. Excerpts of which are published in
in A.L.Gaylor's book, along with her writings on Slavery, War, Liberty,
Women and Morality.
After her death,
Chapman Cohen, president of the National Secular Society noted:- "that
she belonged to that small army of brave people who made it their duty,
without thought of themselves or hope or expectation of reward, to
strive for unpopular causes"
In
'Christianity and Conduct; Or; The Influence of Religious Beliefs on
Morals' she wrote:-
On Slavery -
It was not
Christianity which freed the slave: Christianity accepted slavery;
Christian ministers defended it; Christian merchants trafficked in
human flesh and blood, and drew their profits from the unspeakable
horrors of the middle passage. Christian slaveholders treated their
slaves as they did the cattle in their fields: they worked them,
scourged them, mated them , parted the, and sold them at will.
Abolition came with the decline in religious belief, and largely
through the efforts of those who were denounced as heretics. In
America Thomas Paine was the first person to publicly advocate the
emancipation of the slave, and the work was taken up and carried to
success three quarters of a century later by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln
was certainly not an orthodox Christian; at most he was a Deist, and
it is extremely doubtful whether he was even that. He was and eager
reader and admirer of Thomas Paine and of Volney; He himself wrote an
attack upon Christianity. So general was the Christian opposition to
abolition in the United States that even in Boston itself all the
churches and the schools, which were at that time under the control of
the churches, were closed against the anti-slavery advocates, The only
hall open to that most eloquent abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison -
for the kidnapping of whom Georgia offered a reward of five thousand
dollars was one belonging to Abner Kneeland, the despised
"infidel" who had been imprisoned for his heresy. During the
anti-slavery struggle in America, so closely were emancipation and
unbelief associated in the popular mind that "abolitionist"
and "infidel" were frequently used as synonymous
terms."
On Women she
wrote:-
It is
difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and
practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to
the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with all
its accompanying disabilities, they always have been, and always must
be, at a natural disadvantage in the struggle of life as compared with
men....
With certain
exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position
of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the
religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious
the people the lower the status of the women...
The rise which
has taken place recently in the status of women in certain countries
is due almost wholly, if not entirely, to the decline in religious
belief. Among our won people where circumstances have been specially
favourable to the growth of the spirit of liberty, the independence of
women and the equalisation of their rights have come only little by
little; every step has been gained in defiance of the Church and the
teachings of the Scriptures, and in no way thought their aid. When
women cease to kiss the rod which has chastised them for the past
sixteen centuries, their emancipation will be still further hastened,
their characters strengthened, and their activities given full scope,
not only in England but in France, Italy, Spain and in other of the
Christian countries in the world, The wider education of women
should do much to improve their condition; it should make them respect
themselves more. The more women know, the less they will
"believe." And once released from the thralldom of belief,
they will be free to prove their own worth. The more heretical women
become - i.e. the more they think, criticise and make up their minds
for themselves, instead of humbly asking their husbands, and enjoined
by St. Paul - the sooner they will reach a position of dignity and
independence."
Her
conclusion
Christian
morality depends finally upon the belief in immortality, with in most
cases - a belief in a future state of rewards and punishments of some
kind or another....Necessarily, therefore, the individual believer is
much more concerned about the welfare of his own soul in eternity than
about the welfare of the bodies of others, sojourning here on earth
for a short space of time.
The mental
outlook of the man without religion is in complete contrast to that of
the believing Christian. This life is all he has: it is all his
brother has. When death's long sleep comes to end the chapter, the
book is closed. There is no sequel, no after-life, good or bad. Hence
it becomes the duty of every man to live the best life he can, so that
he may leave the world, the only world he will ever know, better than
he found it...
Happily for
the world, except under stress of fanaticism or bigotry, men in the
mass are almost always better than their creed. The desire for the
common good, rooted deep in the primitive instinct for
self-preservation is constantly triumphing over the combined forces of
self-interest and religious authority. But in future ethics, in
rational ethics, the general interest of humanity should be no rival;
it must be supreme. for on the broad foundations of human welfare, and
on that alone, can men ever hope to build up a truly sane and lofty
morality.
"Women
Without Superstition, "No Gods, No Masters"